Env to JSON Converter

What this does

Takes a .env file (the kind dotenv reads, the kind you check into .env.example, the kind your Docker container loads at boot) and turns it into a JSON object. Useful when you need to feed config into a tool that wants JSON — Kubernetes ConfigMaps, AWS SSM Parameter Store, GitHub Actions inputs, Terraform tfvars, or just a quick visual sanity check that your .env parses the way you think it does.

The parser handles the cases people actually hit:

• Quoted values — KEY="some value with spaces" works. Single quotes preserve literally; double quotes process \n, \t, \", \\ escape sequences.
• Comments — full-line comments (# comment) are skipped. Inline comments after unquoted values (KEY=value # note) are stripped from the value.
• export prefix — export KEY=value is treated like KEY=value. Bash compatibility.
• Type coercion (optional) — when on, true/false/null and pure-numeric strings become their JSON-typed equivalents instead of remaining strings. Off by default for unquoted values where you may want strings preserved (e.g., a port "8080" you’ll concat into a URL).

Common gotchas it does NOT do (deliberately):

• Variable interpolation (KEY=${OTHER_KEY}) — dotenv tools differ on this; we don’t expand. Paste already-resolved values.
• Multiline values — pure spec dotenv doesn’t support these. If you have multiline secrets, base64-encode them first.

Real use cases

• Kubernetes ConfigMap migration. You have a .env for a Docker container; you need a ConfigMap entry. Paste in, copy JSON, embed under data:.
• GitHub Actions --env-file to inputs. Action inputs want JSON-shaped objects; your repo has a .env. Convert once, paste into workflow.
• Terraform tfvars. Your dev environment is in .env; your terraform plan wants --var-file=*.tfvars.json. Convert.
• AWS SSM Parameter Store seeding. You need to write a hundred KEY=value pairs into Parameter Store. Convert to JSON, then loop the keys with aws ssm put-parameter.
• Sanity check. “Does my .env actually parse?” Paste in. If keys are missing from the JSON, your file is malformed.

How parsing decisions work

For each non-empty, non-comment line:

1. Match [export ]KEY=value. If it doesn’t match, the line is reported as an error (line number included).
2. If the value starts and ends with the same quote ("..." or '...'), strip them. Apply escape unescaping for double quotes.
3. If unquoted, trim trailing whitespace, then strip inline comments at the first # (space-hash) sequence.
4. If type coercion is on, check if the string equals true, false, null, or matches ^-?\d+(\.\d+)?$. Convert if so.
5. Assign out[key] = value. Duplicate keys overwrite (last wins, same as dotenv).

Errors are reported below the input area but don’t abort the conversion — valid lines still appear in the output. This is intentional: when you paste a half-broken file you want to see what does work, not just a “syntax error” message.

Privacy

The tool runs entirely in your browser. The textarea contents never leave your machine — no fetch, no analytics, no telemetry. You can verify by opening DevTools → Network tab and converting; you’ll see zero network requests fire.

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